Living La Vida Local.

We had six days in Puerto Ayora, the main city in the Galapagos. As main cities go, it's pretty small, a sleepy little beach town of around, well, that depends who you talk to. Our guide said around 28,000, Wikipedia says 11,000 in 2012. It's hard to believe that the population has increased that much in three years. And the town feels closer to 11,000. That's about the population of the sleepy little beach town I lived in growing up, so I felt instantly comfortable here. Laguna Beach is is now about 23,000, and it feels way more crowded than Puerto Ayora.

Here's the main plaza on Tuesday afternoon. Interestingly almost every vehicle on the island is either a motor scooter or a white Toyota Hilux crew cab pickup. A few Mazda or Chevy pickups sneak in, but 99% of all the trucks are white. There are almost no cars. This gives the place an odd feel, like someone's secretly filming a Toyota commercial.

Puerto Ayora is a relatively new town. The first record of human habitation dates from 1905 when three sailors were shipwrecked here for a couple years, and the town was never more than a few hundred people until the late 1970s.

Almost all the signs here are hand-painted, and a lot of the businesses have fanciful or informative painting advertising their wares.

Like Laguna, Puerto Ayora has attracted a community of artists. There are many galleries featuring very interesting artworks. While we were strolling around town, we came upon this small lot filled with colorful mosaics. We thought it was a pocket park a first, but it was actually the artist's front yard. None of the pieces were for sale, he or she had simply created them to enliven the space.

We visited the local fish market, where the sea lions and pelicans beg for scraps (and get them).

On the edge of town is the Charles Darwin Research Station which was set up to study and help preserve the local wildlife.

Part of that mission is a breeding center for giant tortoises. They are kept in a huge enclosure that provides them plenty of room to roam and lots of native plants for them to eat.

Eggs are collected in the wild and brought here to be incubated. The temperature at which is egg is incubated determines the tortoise's sex: 82 degrees for male, 85 for female. This gives the researchers an easy way to control the ratio of males to females.

There are 10 different species of tortoise, each native to a particular island. The differences can be subtle, but real. For example, one species has an especially long neck because it feeds on leaves that are higher off the ground.

There used to be 14 species, but man and introduced animals like dogs and the Norwegian rat killed off four. Whalers especially found the tortoises to be a walking larder. Here was an animal that can go without food or water for a year, providing the sailors with fresh meat without consuming any of the ship's precious stores. At one point, it's thought that the tortoise population shrank to about 100 individuals.

The Darwin Center's breeding program is helping turn that around. Eggs from each island are kept together and the young raised in separate enclosures. Each tortoise is marked with a number identifying it as an individual and the island it comes from.

At two years old, The youngsters are taken out of the baby pens and allowed to wander around an enclosure of their own.

Here's the part of the breeding program everyone's really interested in. This guy was making the oddest whistling, panting groans, but I guess we all do.

Frank, is that you?

Oh, hi, George.

This marine iguana was just sunning himself on the sidewalk.

He wasn't about to move no matter how many people stepped over him.

These spectacular cactus trees are another species that are endemic to the Galapagos.

Unfortunately, the Darwin Center is going through a terrible financial crisis and will probably have to close down soon. What will become of the breeding program is anyone's guess.

While we were here, there was a large march in town. The islanders are protesting the president's plans to auction off mineral extraction, fishing, and development rights to international corporations, most likely Chinese. People here are afraid that the ecosystem and the tourist appeal of the islands will be destroyed if this is allowed to happen.

On our penultimate day in the islands, we took one last snorkeling trip to Isla Pinzon. In a shallow channel on the east side of the island we again didn't see the promised penguins, but O did see her first shark, a five foot white-tip. We also saw a tiger snake eel, lots of colorful fish, and a couple young sea lions wrestling and playing together, We were able to get within a few feet of them as the tumbled through the shallow water, turning somersaults, biting each other fins, and generally having a good time.

At the next spot, O was too cold to go in. There were dozens of sea turtles swimming about 20 to 30 feet below us. Best of all though, I got to play with a couple young sea lions. The would cruise by me, make eye contact, then I would dive down and try to match their moves, changing direction suddenly, twisting and turning with them underwater. It was so much fun.

The final spot was a lonely little outcropping out in the middle of the sea just big enough for a couple nesting boobies and resting sea lions.

The surge was fairly strong, so O wisely sat this one out. The outcropping was home to about a dozen white-tip sharks, and we got to dive among them as they prowled around the base of the rocks.

So that was our Galapagos adventure. Now we head to the little mountain town of Loja at about 5,500 feet, working our way slowly up to Quito at 9,200 feet. We hope to spend three or four days there, then head down the eastern side of the Andes to the headwaters of the Amazon for an exciting jungle adventure.

Stay tuned.

P.